this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Glass is actually more of a very slow moving liquid than a solid. You can see this on windows that are hundreds of years old, e.g. in churches. They will be thicker on the bottom because part of the glass flowed down.
No it isn't. That's an urban legend.
It's a matter of debate, but it definitely isn't a solid.
You are telling me that if we heat glass it would deform? Who would have thought about that right
Heat in this context means any temperature above -273.15°C. Steel doesn't display liquid properties at "room temperature", glass does.
Which liquid property? I don't see any
Deforming on time scales longer than a human life, so that's why you wouldn't see it. It might indeed be an urban legend, I don't know, but given the claims in the article I cited I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility.
Well, the churches glass deforming overtime were indeed a mith
Alright, but the article is talking about long to infinite timescales. The discussion above was about church windows and that is not caused by glass flowing.
Long to infinite timescales for it to crystallise, that is to solidify. This is explicitly noted in the abstract of the paper the article is based on. I understood the "short timescales" on which it "relaxes towards the liquid state" to mean more than one human life time based on figure 4 (the image also shown in the article), but not so sure about the 10ky cited in the OP though.
Yeah that might indeed be an urban legend, could be manufacturing artefacts as claimed here. However I will note that the version of it I am familiar with isn't about "bull’s eye marks, warps, and lines" as that article states, but specifically about old windows being thicker only at the bottom.